


Magnet Tar Pit Trap

by J_Baillier



Series: Hell Be At The Door [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Family Secrets, Homophobia, Loss, Love, M/M, Miscommunication, Mystery, Pining, Romance, Sherlock's Past, Tragedy, but the rest of the series does, post-season 3, the return of violin!grunge!lock, this bit does not much Lovecraftian horror contain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 14:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7391179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Baillier/pseuds/J_Baillier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What was going through Sherlock's head after he realized who their visitor was in chapter 4 of "A Diseased Fancy"? </p><p>A short story taking place in the "Hell Be At The Door" verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magnet Tar Pit Trap

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emma221b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emma221b/gifts).



> This will be the last part of the series. If I could I would hug each and every one of my readers who have joined me on this journey. 
> 
> I owe a great debt to my outstanding betas for this series, Emma221b and 7PercentSolution. This oneshot was betaed by 7PercentSolution.
> 
> The name of this story comes from Nirvana's " _Heart-Shaped Box_ ", which Sherlock was playing on the violin near the end of the fourth chapter of "A Diseased Fancy". In this short story we learn _why_ he chose that particular melody.

  


>   
>  _"Shame is the shadow of love."_  
>  \- Polly Jean Harvey

  
  


The Mind Palace has been stormed, its defences decimated. The enemy has breached the gates, and everything is in disarray. 

The intruder is already standing in their living room, and John has given him _tea_.

Victor Trevor. 

Victor Alexander Trevor, whose father is of the Colchester Trevors and his mother a descendant of the De La Poers of Cornwall.

This is factual information, and factual information is easy to keep organized and under control. Memories are different. They are the gurgling old pipes threatening to crack at any minute and flood entire Palace floors. They are the storm winds that crack windows, the pillaging Vikings that destroy and defile, the power surges that overheat the hard drive. Sherlock has always been infuriatingly terrible at containing this kind of memory despite begrudgingly asking for pointers from the Poncy Big Brother Unit during his weakest moments.

This is not just a collection of facts.

This is _his_ Victor. 

Once. No longer. Not ever again. 

Sherlock's brain feels as though it has ground to a halt, jarred, sticky like a thick brand of cheap honey. Stuck in a loop, unable to deduce what sort of verbal pole vaulting of moats this man has performed to get John to invite him in with a curious smile on his face.

Sherlock hates that smile. It's a special sort of nuisance that creeps onto John's features when he's faced with what he sees as a salient opportunity to find out something about Sherlock which Sherlock himself would not be offering voluntarily. 

He's vulnerable now, too open, too exposed like a raw nerve and John might actually get him to reveal things he wouldn't, just because he's been caught off guard by their visitor - torn out of a composed, calm state of mind into a sweeping river of confusion. It's like thinking there's going to be one more step in the staircase but there isn't, and there's just going to be an embarrassing stumble and a readjusting of perspective.

John had told him there was going to be a client. How is Victor a client? Why the hell would John mistake him for one? Was that what he'd claimed to be? He doesn't want to ask, because he doesn't want to hear that voice in his ears. Not after all these years - it could undo all his efforts of trying to give those memories a belittling, water-under-the-bridge quality. He'd tried to delete it all, but some things are too strong to be removed, like weeds growing through the concrete he had tried to pour all over the Palace rooms that had once been dedicated to this man.

"Victor?" his mouth makes a move his brain had not yet fully formulated or condoned.

Neither of the men nursing tea mugs and looking disgracefully comfortable in the living room say a word. They must be surprised at his reaction, which is a sobering thought. What have they read on his face?

Sherlock looks at John, swallows, pleads him to read his mind. He wants John to be ridiculously protective _right now_ , to hover, to ask ' _are you alright_ ' and ' _should I ask him to leave_ ', but the other half of him, the _sensible_ half, wants to keep John out of this, lest he dare ask why Sherlock would feel such a need to be protected. At the hospital after the shooting John had practically appointed himself Sherlock's bodyguard, limiting visits in a manner suggestive of John wanting as much time alone with Sherlock as possible. Sherlock hadn't had any objections to that, really. His intellect had been temporarily decimated by morphine, he'd been sore and bored and frustrated and upset and John is always the best antidote for all those things. John, and no one else. It's mortifying, really, how he has been forced to admit he enjoys John's mothering on occasion, but he sincerely hopes it's more due to a generalized human need for companionship than the cancerous need eating at his soul that he hopes he will manage to turn off any day now.

 _Any day now._

After exposing himself and his feelings so carelessly to John and been proven an idiot for hoping that those feelings were reciprocated, Sherlock knows he needs to now employ his iron will to erasing the effects of the whole incident from their relationship. He had managed to stop needing Victor, so why wouldn't he be capable of suffocating these useless feelings for John, then? He's had practice in this sort of letting go, but he has to admit John is proving to be the bigger challenge. Perhaps it's because John hasn't left. He's there, all the time.

A sudden rage bubbles up when he takes in the visage of Victor again. Why must he be subjected to this, now? Isn't it enough of a punishment for his childish hopes that he has to face his flatmate every bloody morning and watch the man pretend like Sherlock hasn't utterly exposed and embarrassed himself? What does John even want, some sort of a medal for staying and treating Sherlock with respect even after------

He realizes he hasn't even tried to deduce Victor yet - hasn't tried to read on his face and his clothes wht he's doing here. Truly his nerves must be frayed if he has failed to do that as automatically as he tends to do. Usually the information pours in even when he's not trying to do it - he's spent countless nightly hours trying to stop his brain from doing that, trying to slow its cogs so that he could get some bloody _sleep_ , but it seems that the reset button he's been hoping to find exists, and it's the face of Victor.

John looks curious, expectant now. He's scrutinizing Victor much more carefully than he does their actual clients. This might mean that _John_ has deduced something, which is never a good thing. Usually he gets everything wrong, but when it comes to Sherlock he has an infuriating habit of hitting the truth more than occasionally.

How much does John know about Victor? Have they had a discussion downstairs before John had decided to escort Victor up? For how long? He can only hope that John still knows very little, and Sherlock would prefer it stay that way. 

What should he do? Usher Victor off to another room? His bedroom won't do, too intimate. Outside? John would want to follow. Evict John temporarily? That would make the man both angry and more curious. Not a good solution.

A song is now playing in his head. A musical screensaver for his brain. It's not even a song he likes, and the fact that he can't remember its name is, frankly, just insult to injury.

Pop music. Such ridiculous clutter. Unbearable clutter making his brain feel more like a jumble sale than a library. Damn it. He should make good on his threat to throw the both the television set and the radio out of the window. 

He hates the radio, because it reminds him of Victor. Music has always gotten under his skin, and hearing the songs Victor used to love tends to be like a sucker punch. The song playing in his head still must be one of those.

Stupid, unruly brain with its unruly, useless emotions and idle pastimes.

 _Focus. Contain damage._

Sherlock decides that it's best that John stays. 

This turns out to be a good decision, because John is the one who breaks the uncomfortable silence. Bless John for speaking, for giving Sherlock's brain some saner rail to turn to.

"Victor who?" John asks.

Hasn't John gathered this information downstairs already? Is he so acclimatized to random criminals appearing in their shared home whenever they bloody well please, that he has stopped screening their visitors? What has given John the idea he has the right to single-handedly decide to accept these visitors? There need to be rules about these sorts of things. Maybe Sherlock's imbecillic college roommate had been right: if rules are not discussed, they don't exist.

" _Fucking negative creep_ ," said roommate has hissed, when Sherlock had refused to agree to arbitrary house rules about socks hanging from the door handle when one of them had brought a date to their shared lodging for the purposes of sex.

John had never suggested socks to be utilized in this purpose. He'd probably assumed going upstairs with his women would be enough to send Sherlock out of the flat. 

It wasn't. He had always stayed. To prove a point? Out of petulance? Out of jealousy?

32 nights Sherlock had been forced to listen to the moaning, the panting, the grunting, the headboard pounding against the wall. 

It wasn't voyeurism. He had no interest in observing such animalistic, casual, thoughtless, frivolous sex.

What he was interested in was _John_ , and that was a side of John he never got to experience unless he resorted to eavesdropping.

How dare Victor walk in here like this, even if invited by John after what couldn't have been but a brief conversation on the street?

_Enough tangent. Back to the situation at hand._

Sherlock's mouth is dry and he swallows. "John, meet Victor Trevor."

Saying those words opens the valve to deductions. Victor is standing at an acceptable distance from Sherlock. He doesn't have a coat on. When has he ever not had a coat? He was always cold: his fingers in particular had always felt icy. 

He feels as though he's walked into an ambush. An unsuspecting victim, about to walk into a trap. His mind is already caught in the tar pit of unruly emotions, making him slow to react and purposeless in his communications.

Finally, a deduction: Victor has left home in a hurry. Where is home? As far as Sherlock can tell, his demeanour is not of someone who is looking for help - he looks more like a messenger. Something important has happened.

Victor looks haggard, badly slept, eyes puffed up by what is either grief or allergies.

His brain is still frantically scrambling for a proverbial foothold of logic while dangling over the bottomless pit of emotion, but it does tell him that _loss_ is the most likely reason. 

_A death in the family?_

Losing things without getting to say a proper goodbye seems like a recurring theme in Sherlock's life. Redbeard, Victor, John so far below on the pavement on the street next to St Bartholomew's. What Sherlock had said to him was not a goodbye - it had been a lie. 

He tries not to think about those things. It sends his brain on useless loops over things he can't change. 

" _You're overthinking it_ ," Victor had repeatedly told him when he had admitted to being anxious over something, " _Stop doing that_."

'Stop thinking' - as if he wouldn't have done that in a heartbeat, had he known _how_?

John has never told him not to think. John clearly considers Sherlock's thinking is one of more endearing qualities. 

Victor had believed that _not_ thinking must be a key ingredient of sex. 

Would there ever be a time during which John would prefer Sherlock not thinking? At this rate he's never going to find out. 

He's known John for five years. Surely John would have blurted out, drunk on whisky or high on adrenaline, if there was something there, if there was _anything at all_ that could possibly lead to a moment like that, during which Sherlock would be required not to think?

Stopping thinking is like stopping breathing. John would never want him to do that, either.

Somehow, a polite and pointless conversation about the apartment has begun. Sherlock tries to engage as little as possible. Come to think of it, he doesn't actually have a lot to say. John is answering Victor's questions, sounding half-proud, half-embarrassed at the bachelorean state of cleanliness in their home. 

In his current state of mind, if Sherlock was to speak, there would be a risk that he'd let something slip which would allow John to learn things about him, new things, things that John may have already suspected, the confirmation of which could be destructive to their relationship. 

The things that epitomize Victor's role in Sherlock's life are the sorts of things that are never to be discussed in this house.

Talking about _it_ is never a good idea. Saying _it_ out loud has never lead to anything good. There are many words for _it_ , and none of them have ever tasted good on Sherlock's tongue. 

Others have relished the wounding potential of its synonyms, though. " _Here there be faggots_." Announced by a snickering Sebastian Wilkes at the end of an English literature seminar when Sherlock had lingered by the lecture hall doorway, waiting for Victor. It was strange how these slurs, despite even the plural used, only ever seemed to homed at Sherlock, ignoring the fact that their relationship did, in fact, consist of two people. 

In the minds and hearts of others, the odd one out is always the snake, always the Eve holding the apple, the unknown factor to be ground into the sand just in case. 

Victor had never been the odd one out. He got a free pass to be what he was, while Sherlok bore the brunt of the disapproval. Victor belonged in the world, with the hollering crowds, on the cricket field, in the parties. Smiling, talking. Through him, Sherlock had gotten a glimpse of that life, and for a moment he had believed that with Victor, he could stay there, find a place for himself.

As gracious as Victor had always been when they'd been in the presence of his friends, Sherlock had on occasion sensed a tenseness in him. He'd never warned Sherlock off verbally, but it had been quite evident in the lock of his shoulders and the discouraging glances that he worried about Shelock's conduct in terms of preserving his friendships.

" _What do you see in that fucking psycho, Trevor_?" was one of questions Victor had been taunted with while Sherlock was standing right there, next to him. They'd looked at Sherlock like he was a stray dog that had followed Victor home. 

They had been unevenly matched. Two dissimilar creatures from incompatible worlds. That realization had hurt as long as he'd held onto the childish fantasy of being able to hide behind Victor's normality. Any hope of that had been squashed by the late Professor Trevor.

Yes, _late_. It's obvious why Victor is here, from the frown lines to his father's wristwatch suddenly making an appearance on Victor and especially his choice of clothing betraying the fact that he'd left home not on a whim but somewhat impulsively. 

Professor Trevor, dead. 

Good riddance, old fool. The end he'd met was likely too merciful for Sherlock's taste. It was a shame, really, that murder was illegal.

 _John wouldn't like you saying that_ , his mind supplies helpfully. _John would think it a bit not good._

They have now both killed for each other. John, the cabbie. Sherlock, Magnussen. Quid pro quo. Declarations of devotion written on bullets. Why was it easier for them to shoot people than to talk about their feelings?

He watches Victor pick up a newspaper clipping from the floor. John had cut it out from the Mirror. It detailed the triumph of one of their recent cases. ' _Nice picture of you_ ,' John had told him, ' _I'm going to file the clipping_ '.

What does John see, when he looks at that picture? What does Victor see, and are those interpretations at all similar?

Victor is holding the clipping gently between his thumb and forefinger and supporting it with his palm from underneath. 

Sherlock remembers holding hands, fingers wrapped together and holding on tightly. He remembers how those fingers holding the newspaper clipping had curled into his hips, digging in like exquisite claws. 

_Muscle memory._

Sherlock feels like the end of the world is happening in this flat, whereas everywhere else people continue their pedestrian, ridiculous lives without even noticing.

John doesn't look like he's anticipating the end of the world. He has been in one of his default settings - making tea. Sherlock receives a mug from him, which he promptly abandons on the coffee table. If he drank it he'd likely throw up.

A knife - or stomach acid - twists his innards, making him want to sit down. _Hunger? Worry?_ He has no idea. 

Sherlock has wondered what he might say, how he might be, if he ever found himself in Victor's presence. Since he had sworn not to ever seek him out the point had been academic. He should have planned for this.

Victor is in John's chair. How is that possible? John never lets clients sit there. He has clearly now categorized Victor as a special case, a delicate subject to be treated with finesse. Is John hoping for an opportunity for interrogation? John seems to be watching Victor like a hawk, not with malice but eagerly, drinking in anything and everything he does and says. All in all, John looks like he hasn't decided whether to hate or like the man. 

_Reasonable._ A person less familiar with reading his expressions might mistake this for the normal sort of awkward evident when people meet new humans for the first time, but John looks much more assertive than he does with their cliens. Usually John acts the role of the harmless, approachable one. Now he's somehow presiding over the scene looking like a warlord in a guard tower, guarding his assigned territory.

Sherlock must be the territory he's guarding, even though he doesn't _want_ Sherlock. 

He could have Sherlock, right now, _if he only knew_ how Sherlock would practically _beg to be had_ \--- 

John does know. _He knows, and he never lifted a finger._ It seems that John does not want him, but doesn't look kindly on anyone else getting closer to Sherlock, either.

It's patently unfair.

Sentiment. Animalistic urges. Emotions are taking over again in the Palace like flooding storm drains during a tempest. It's hateful.

It's _hateful_.

Victor and John are both staring at him now, mesmerized and a little alarmed as though he's some sort of a caged animal behaving alarmingly. If Sherlock had a gun he would fire it right now at the ceiling just to break the spell.

 _Focus._

If Professor Trevor has died, what is that fact to Sherlock? Is Victor's plan to offer this bit of information like an olive branch; _he's gone, it's fine now_.

Reassurances and promises. Everything that had been between them had all started with these sorts of promises, reassurances, condolences and apologies: " _Shit, shit, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, he's never done that before, I swear? God, you're bleeding--- let me-- you're Sherlock, right? Come on, first aid kit's in the kitchen._ " These had been the first words Victor had spoken to him, ever. The pain of the dog bite had been forgotten quickly, because Victor had been looking at him like John looks at him sometimes, when he thinks Sherlock doesn't notice. It had been intoxicating, exciting, new, terrifying and fascinating at once. 

It had been their lovely secret, but Sherlock should have seen it for what it was: a path to destruction in the form of a courtship. 

He should rejoice over the fact that he'd gotten out by the skin of his teeth.

What a stupid proverb. _Must tell that to John sometimes._ John would probably appreciate debunking such anatomic falsehoods. He always enjoys it when Sherlock calls things out for what they are. Except for when Sherlock does it to John.

John doesn't like it when Sherlock is his mirror in that way, revealing what John is thinking but doesn't want to verbalize. 

Sherlock picks at a cuticle in what he hopes would seem like a nonchalant, idle manner. 

_No ring on Victor's finger. Still single?_

Victor lets his gaze sweep all over him. He isn't attempting to hide the fact that he's examining Sherlock very closely and appraisingly. 

John looks at him like that sometimes. In Baskerville he'd been quite keen on looking, and Sherlock had wondered if John's irritability had had something to do with that. Perhaps he'd hated that he wanted to look and had taken that out on Sherlock. 

"You look --- really good, I guess. Well, I mean," Victor says and anger flares up in Sherlock. Victor doesn't have the right to have such an opinion of him anymore.

Victor had once said such nice things to him. " _I love you_ " had been one of them. The warmth of that memory is strangely consoling and awakens things in him he has tried hard to bury.

It's suddenly John's gaze that feels as though it's burning a hole into Sherlock. He has caught sight of something novel and interesting. 

Sherlock realizes what it is when a warm flush like opening the door on a rainy day spreads through his chest, and his cheeks feel tight.

_Don't fucking blush. Not in John's presence._

_Fuck._

Sherlock turns sideways, not far enough to arouse suspicion but enough to remove his face from John's line of sight but it's too late.

John looks amused, and even if Sherlock is certain he doesn't mean to be cruel, even his benign delight at Sherlock's predicament stings. He wants to throw the Union Jack pillow at John's head. 

John actually puts down his mug and leans on the kitchen table so that he can focus all his attention on Sherlock. Is this how he is with patients, analyzing every detail, trying to interpret every word, every gesture, every thing left unsaid? 

_No wonder people hate going to the doctor._

Sherlock bites his lip and then straightens his spine. He folds his hands onto his lap to keep John from noticing they're shaking slightly. He hopes to look calm, composed business-like but he only has John and Victor's reactions to judge whether he has succeeded so he is left without a clear assessment. 

John is obviously waiting for him to say something. As to what exactly, Sherlock has no idea. He doesn't have a script for this. This isn't a client, as John's own behaviour has been practically screaming from the moment he let Victor into their home.

"He's gone. Dead, I mean. A month ago," Victor says before Sherlock can figure out what it is that John wants him to verbalize.

 _Of course he's dead._ That's why Victor is here, such a pedestrian deduction, really but still, a sudden pang of relief and vengeance breaks free and makes Sherlock flinch now that Victor has actually said it out loud.

"How?" Sherlock asks; not that it's at all relevant since dead is dead, but isn't that what one is supposed to ask? Humans are expected to want to know why and how and when, even though none of it fixes things. They ask, because it gives them a false sense control over the chaos force that is death. They want to have order, answers, adherence to rules. 

Sherlock would love to have those things, too, right about now, but he knows that death and the universe can't be controlled any more than the current maelstrom of his emotions.

"The coroner's report says arrhythmia. He had a coronary bypass two years ago," Victor says.

"You know they can't prove that. No one can prove arrhythmia unless the patient was hooked up to an ECG monitor when it happened," Sherlock points out sharply. They're back in the realm of fact, which is lovely and reassuringly familiar. As an added benefit this medical chitchat will hopefully distract John from everything else that's going on, so Sherlock decides he had better drag it out.

"It's over, he's gone and I'm not going to go spinning up some mystery around it - I'm not here to hire you. Like you always used to say, hardly relevant." Victor smiles slightly as though remembering something pleasant. "Always so clever," he says and there's a tender, regretful note in his tone. 

Suddenly, it's all too much for Sherlock. He's an instrument and Victor is pressing the keys at random, plucking his emotions like violin strings without even realizing he's doing so. 

Sherlock stands up and wanders to the window as a makeshift escape.

John inhales as though he's about to say something he's been mulling around in his head. 

_Don't look at John. Do. Not. Look. At. John. Don't----_

The mind is a traitorous thing, Sherlock realizes while stealing a glance at the man. John's gaze is narrowed, pupils slightly dilated since Sherlock can make them out even from this distance. He no longer sits slumped against the table like he'd been a moment ago - instead he is leaning slightly forward, curious, baffled, intrigued, surprised. 

Something has changed. John now looks privy to a secret, and it is likely why he had opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. There's something he has realized but doesn't know how to address. 

John's eyes dart from Victor to Sherlock, and Sherlock realizes what John has just realized.

John now knows what Sherlock is, what he is to Victor and Victor to him.

The penny has dropped, then. Maybe he does, on occasion, underestimate John. He can't throw Victor out, not now, because John wouldn't allow it. John will now interpret everything he and Victor do or say through a certain lens, and without a doubt Victor's potential as a source of information about Sherlock has now increased exponentially in John's eyes. 

" _I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap_ ," a man's voice sings in his head. It's from that stupid song that had been just an errant melody before, but now he realizes what it is - a song Victor had loved. It hadn't been what Sherlock would have described as pleasant music - more dissonant noise, really. 

It's strange what the mind retains from emotional moments. ' _I love you, Sherlock_ ,' with that song in the background.

John is still looking at him like he has suddenly sprouted a pair of horns. Sherlock would give ten years off his life to be very, very high right now. Preferably so high he'd be practically unconscious.

The universe doesn't grant him that respite, because he is supposed to not indulge in those unhealthy coping mechanisms now - as far as everyone else is concerned he's clean, sober, brand new life, there's John who sorts him out and everything is fine, fine, fine, all fine.

He'll _never_ be over any of it, because how does one get over that one lesson that truly reveals the limits of what sort of happiness one can realistically pursue on this mortal plane? His hand had been revealed to him, and the rest of his life will be nothing but an epilogue of that epiphany.

This is going to be mortifying. And there's nothing Sherlock can do to stop it.

 

 

 

John invites Victor to stay for dinner. _Perfect example of how the road to hell is said to be paved with good intentions,_ Sherlock thinks, and tries to demonstrate the fastest possible chopstick technique so that the whole ordeal would be over more quickly. No one seems to pick up on this.

At the end of the evening Sherlock picks up the violin after being mildly prompted to do so. Instead of his usual repertoire he finds himself playing the song that had burrowed itself into his brain. He decides to give it life through the strings mostly to exorcise it, but also so that everyone could have a nice enough time that they'd be motivated enough to leave him alone. 

He used to do this as a child - communicate with the dance of his fingers on the strings instead of saying things out loud. He'd made his anger and disappointment at Mycroft's departure to school known by torturing the instrument until it had been confiscated from him temporarily.

At university, he'd sometimes brought it along to one of the pretentious student bars Victor insisted on dragging him to. He'd brought it, because when he was playing it he wasn't making enemies.

The violin is the only thing that has ever successfully earned him a permission to exist in a social setting. 

John is the exception to that, of course, since John seems to enjoy him existing just fine, violin or no violin.

Victor takes the reins after that, sharing with John stories from their university days. Thankfully he refrains from a more detailed recounting of their relationship. 

Finally, Victor leaves. Sherlock knows he ought to ruminate on the matter of the inheritance, but he's too tired, to frazzled to do so tonight. 

He plays some Brahms because it calms him down. 

John attempts some more smalltalk. It's one of his default modes, this polite pointlessness that he likely uses to emotionally disarm his patients so that they will feel comfortable allowing him poking his fingers into their orifices. Clinical medicine is strange.

"I bet running a movie rental in some sleepy village wasn't what he saw in his future during those college years," John says.

"Was being a detective's assistant with a shot-through shoulder what you saw in yours?" Sherlock points out. He hadn't meant to sound bitter or to insult John, but it's a valid point and he hopes John is in a good mood after learning so many new things about Sherlock that he won't huff and disappear into his bedroom upstairs.

Strange. Before Victor had left Sherlock had wanted nothing else than to be left alone. Now that it's just the two of them in the flat again he finds John's presence more calming than the Brahms. Maybe it's the simple fact that he's still there, hasn't run for the hills.

"Touché, although I'm certainly not your assistant," John points out. "Are you going to see him again?"

Why would he? Does John assume he wants to? Does that bother John? Would it be a disastrous idea to ask? Probably. Sherlock doesn't trust his own judgement right now, not at all. "I don't think so," is his careful, quiet answer.

John seems to catch it in his tone that he doesn't wish to discuss Victor any further. John rocks back on his heels and pats Sherlock's shoulder absent-mindedly on his way to the bathroom.

His fingers leave behind a ghost sensation - a tingly warmth that almost tickles.

Sherlock slides the fingers of his opposite hand to pat the spot. The feeling disappears, and in its place he now just feels his own fingers. Dull, predictable.

He feels John’s absence, painfully. 

It's a feeling he tries to avoid naming, because he likes to indulge in the notion that he's above such issues.

_Loneliness._

The trap has been sprung, and he has fallen to the bottom of the pit.

  


\- The End -

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Even though this series is now done, I shall not be resting on my laurels. My next story will be one I promised my readers a while ago - an oldschool bromance taking part in the early days of John & Sherlock's flatmateship called " _The Desperate And The Shirtless_ ". No tentacles or occult spells, just _very_ generous helpings of medical H &C and angst X-)


End file.
